Met arrest boy, 16, in worldwide raids on 'Anonymous' hackers

A 16-year-old boy has been arrested in south London as part of a global crackdown on hacking group Anonymous.

British and Dutch police worked with the FBI to carry out dozens of dawn raids, with 14 arrests in the US, one in Britain and four in Holland.

The teenager was arrested yesterday and taken to a central London police station, where he remained in custody today on suspicion of breaching the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

Met officers took computer equipment from the address for further investigation.

The Anonymous group has electronically attacked Sony, and yesterday helped bring down all News International's websites in a cyber protest against Rupert Murdoch and the phone-hacking scandal.

The London suspect is the second British teenager to be arrested recently over allegations of cybercrime, and appeared in leaked chat logs of the group.

Last month Ryan Cleary was charged with five counts of hacking related to a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks against Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the British Phonographic Industry.

Cleary, 19, of Wickford, Essex, is on conditional bail.

The 14 people held in America were allegedly involved in a cyber-attack by Anonymous on PayPal's website in retaliation for the online payment business suspending the accounts of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

They were arrested in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio, and charged in court in San Jose. FBI agents executed more than 35 search warrants as part of its investigation into cyber-attacks on major companies and organisations.

In the US, the charge of intentional damage to a protected computer carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

The attacks on PayPal followed the release by WikiLeaks in November of classified US State Department cables.

Anonymous also claimed to have disrupted the websites of Visa and MasterCard in December when the credit card companies stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.